


Come Home to You; And I Ask You To

by ohjustdisarmalready



Series: And I 'verse [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Sibling Love, big ol pile of found family feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-03 12:10:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12748047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohjustdisarmalready/pseuds/ohjustdisarmalready
Summary: The twins are back, but things are different now. The crew of the Starblaster adjusts.





	1. Magnus

**Author's Note:**

> This one's gonna be multichapter, probably two chapters per crewmember? Maybe? We all know how my plans work out, I have no idea what's going on. Lucretia will be next, though.
> 
> Please read And I Will before this or it won't make very much sense!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus and Taako hang out.

Taako was focusing hard on the smallest, gentlest mage hand he could possibly produce. Fucking baby bird mage hand, the kind of thing you would use to hold a, a kitten or some shit. Tiny, non-dangerous mage hand that would not explode with wild magic.

“MAGNUS!”

Taako’s tiny, gentle mage hand erupted into clawed fragments and he let it dissipate. He turned to his dear, beloved crewmate and let the magic keep sparking around him.

“Magnus,” he said. “ _Magnus_.”

Magnus didn’t seem too intimidated.

“You were concentrating! I needed to!” He protested. Taako tried hard to loom over him.

“So you yelled your own name at me?” He asked.

Magnus grinned unrepentantly, slinging an arm around Taako’s shoulders now that the magic was done sparking itself out.

“It was all I could think of in the moment! You gonna make supper any time soon?” He tugged Taako to the door of the lab, but didn’t pull hard enough to move him. Taako tried to hit his shoulder, but he didn’t even seem to notice. Dick.

“Make your own damn supper, I’m busy.” He wasn’t, really, but it was the principle of the thing. None of these guys could cook for shit and he wasn’t gonna be around forever.

Magnus was giving him the puppy eyes. He hated the puppy eyes.

“Pleeeeeease? I’m _starving_ Taako, I’m gonna _starve_ ,” he whined. Taako rolled his eyes but allowed himself to be dragged out of the lab.

“I should take a break anyway, I guess. Did you guys get groceries while I was out?” He started poking around the cabinets to check out the food situation. Not good, apparently.

“Merle seduced some vegetables,” Magnus offered from _right behind him_ _holy shit_. Taako whirled around, weapon half-formed in instinct before he dismissed it.

“Fuck! Don’t sneak up on me like that, what the fuck,” he gasped. “Holy _shit_ , Magnus.”

Magnus immediately put his hands up and gave him some space. “Uh, sorry? I thought you knew I was there. You good?”

Taako put a hand on his chest. His heart was going like a jackhammer. “Yeah, homie, it’s no thing. Show me these veggies, let’s see the damage.”

Magnus looked at him for half a moment, but then he shrugged and let it go.

“Yeah, he put ‘em all in here. What bowls do you need? Cutting board?” He started rummaging through the cooking utensils while Taako sorted through the vegetables. Lots of zucchini. Were those zucchini? Lots of…something.

“Gonna need a decent mixing bowl…we got any lemon juice?” Magnus shook a bottle of lime juice at him. “Yeah, that’ll do. Gonna need that cast-iron pan, you know the one. Cutting board, knife or two. The fuck did Merle get these things?”

On second hand, better not to know. Taako started washing veggies. “Right, we’ll need a peeler too. You wanna wash or chop?”

Magnus made some damn noise as he approached this time, so Taako didn’t have to clobber him with a mysterious vegetable.

“Here’s the peeler. What can I get started chopping?” He asked. Taako put the peeler to the side with the cutting board and handed him a couple of squash-looking things.

“Go for these, big guy. Merle mention any of this being toxic?” Magnus shrugged. Yeah, he wouldn’t have. Probably best to cook ‘em up a bit before doing a taste test just in case. Taako set the washed veggies out to dry.

“We’ll need slices for most of these, gonna try to make—” He tensed with soul-deep panic that he was pretty sure didn’t come from him.

“Taako!” Lup’s voice came down the hall and he dashed to the doorway, but before he could get there she was busting into the kitchen ready to fuckin’ rumble.

“Whoa, whoa, Lup, where’s the fire?” Taako asked, peering down the hall. He hadn’t felt any injury from her, and he wasn’t seeing anything…

“Taako holy shit don’t—holy _fuck_ Taako we got back to the lab and you were just gone,” Lup gasped, stopping to catch her breath.

He caught her shoulders. He was trying real hard to be done with the whole trauma thing, but for her, okay.

“Hey it’s okay I’m right here, just went to make some kickass food it’s cool Lup, don’t even worry about it.” He rubbed his thumbs in little circles and she took a deep, fortifying breath, shoving it down to deal with later. He squeezed her shoulders before letting go so she could straighten out.

“Right, food. It’s that time already? Right. Time flies and all.” She brushed out the wrinkles in her shirt and another pair of feet charged down the hallway.

“Lup he wasn’t in his room I—oh, Taako. There you are. Hi, Magnus.”

Magnus, who had returned to chopping vegetables to give the twins an illusion of privacy, waved his knife briefly in greeting. “Hey, Barry.”

“Yeah, I went to the kitchen. It’s food time and I’m feeding us.” Taako gave his sister a last fortifying shoulder pat before going to gather the vegetable slices. Magnus hadn’t finished cutting them all but he put them in a neat little pile at the end of the cutting board.

“Of course, supper. Is it that late already? Right.” Barry did his cute little trick where he refused to look at or directly acknowledge Taako, which was charming, really. Just adorable.

“Looks like it, lab nerd. You wanna help Magnus with the veggies?” It never hurt to ask. Barry shrugged him off before he could finish the question.

“No, I should uh, get back to the lab. Finish things up and all. Lup, you coming or are you gonna help with supper?” He backed out before she could answer and scurried back in the direction of the lab. Taako watched him go.

Lup’s brows furrowed and she started to speak, but Taako talked over her.

“Go on then, get your geek on. You can get your Taako time in later.” He gave her a light push towards the door on his way to the stove.

“You sure? I can talk to him, he can finish up without me tonight,” Lup offered, and Taako felt a little bad for making her choose between them, but he wasn’t the one running away every time he and Barold were in a room together. He shrugged loosely like it didn’t matter.

“Go on ahead, catch your man,” he teased, throwing in a wink.

“He’s not my—whatever, whatever! I’m gone! Let me know when supper’s ready, I’ll bring nerd patrol out for it.” She swept past him to say a quick hello to Magnus and went back to the lab.

Once she was out of sight, Taako took one moment to wince. He hadn’t necessarily shown the proper respect there. He coughed, counted to five with his back turned to Magnus before smoothing his expression out and turning around.

Magnus was looking at him too knowingly. The guy was like Merle sometimes.

“I finished the squash things,” was all he said, reminding Taako why he tolerated Magnus. He pulled together a smile and a breezy attitude.

“Cool cool, let me just get the uh, let me get that going. Gonna have a little fry tonight. What do we have for protein? Any chicken left?” He started rummaging, and yeah, they did have some chicken. “I’ll get this done first, see what we can do to get the veggies going in some good chicken juices. Just gotta, uh.”

Magnus’s hands stilled his. They were tense. He looked at them and forced them to relax.

“Does it bother you?” Magnus asked, giving him a quick squeeze before taking the chicken from him to cut.

“What? You know me, Mags. Taako the unbothered over here.” He tried to shrug off the feeling of those knowing eyes. Magnus wasn’t even looking at him.

“I won’t judge. You’ve seen me cry over a baby snake before,” Magnus added. Taako snorted inelegantly and rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, that was fuckin’ hilarious.” He swiped the cut chicken into the pan before dancing back out of reach to fry it up with some lime juice, maybe a little garlic and rosemary.

“It was so small! So little! That world had all the spiders, too, what if they ate it! How will it live in the big world all by itself?” The chopping behind him stopped as Magnus got invested again in the snake. It had been a hell of a thing to keep him from bringing it on the ship with them, but those things grew up to be fucking huge and Taako wasn’t about to have a fucking dragon shacking up on his ship, no way.

“Fail and die with the rest of us?” Taako suggested.

“What? No! It was so young!” Magnus protested, walking by loudly to dump some more garlic in the pan with along the chicken. Gross, that was a lot of garlic. Taako wrinkled his nose.

“Yeah, sure. It’s probably totally fine. Yup. Peachy-keen. Probably has a million snake babies already.” He said.

Magnus frowned at him but accepted it. And Lup said Taako couldn’t lie.

Magnus returned to his seat and paused for a moment.

“So does it? Bother you?” He asked again.

Taako heaved a sigh, but it didn’t sound like he was letting this one go. He shook the pan to get an even cook on the chicken.

“It’ll be weird for everyone for a while. Barry’s an awkward fuck anyway.” He frowned at a stubborn piece of chicken that didn’t want to turn. What he wouldn’t give for a stable mage hand.

What wouldn’t he give for a lot of things, really.

“Well yeah, but it still sucks. He won’t look at you,” Magnus said in his empathy voice. Taako half expected him to say he was valid. He couldn’t quite muster a laugh at the thought.

“He just found out I’m not real. Can you blame him?” Even more than that, he’d found out that Taako was technically a sentient construct. Like, one of the things you really aren’t supposed to do with necromancy. One of the things Barry’s damn thesis had been condemning.

 _Person, not thing_. He could practically hear what Lup would have to say.

He turned around and Magnus was staring at him with his deep, serious eyes. He wasn’t even pretending to fiddle with the cutting board or wash the knives or something.

“What. Were you not listening when we covered this?” Taako asked, jutting his hip out stubbornly.

Magnus broke eye contact first. Fuck yeah, still got it.

“Look, I don’t know much about magic and I don’t know pretty much anything about souls,” Magnus started, and Taako did manage a snort this time.

“I mean, you have one, so you’ve got a better starting point than me, bubeleh,” he said, but it sounded bitter more than it sounded like a good bit. “Yeah, sure, you haven’t studied them like me and Lup have. I’ll give you that one.”

Magnus nodded. “Right. Mostly I keep us from dying and I hit things with a pointy stick.”

Oh, fuck, feelings. “Is this like—is this an inadequacy thing? I’m not trying to steal your job dude, just because I was designed to be a badass bodyguard doe—oh shit okay not saying that.”

Taako took a second to clutch his chest and tried to think peaceful thoughts in his sister’s direction when protective rage flared through his soul. _It’s okay it’s okay it’s just Magnus_ , he tried to think towards her.

That really wasn’t how their connection worked, but the pain stopped as soon as he stopped talking and the overprotective fury settled cautiously back to its corner, burning and present but not consuming. He gave it a half hour before she dropped by innocuously to check up on him.

He focused back on his physical reality and Magnus was all up in his face.

“—ou okay? Did I do something? Should I get Lup?” He was saying, and Taako shook his head, shrugging him off and checking on the chicken. Getting a thorough cooking but not burnt yet. Nice. Maybe he should make a slow roast recipe for this some time…

Still, how to confront this. If he couldn’t talk about himself without getting zinged and pissing Lup off…

“I’m good, it’s cool. Look, what I’m saying is you’re—no one’s in the hall, right? Everyone’s busy somewhere else?” He asked. Just in case.

Magnus peered into the hallway and nodded. “Yeah, we’re clear. Did you need something? Water?”

Taako smiled a little and turned away so Magnus wouldn’t see it. What a guy, Magnus Burnsides.

“What I’m saying is you’re—you’re fuckin’ great at what you do. I can’t count the number of times you’ve kept one of us alive.” He flipped the chicken high and caught it to discourage Magnus from hugging him or some bullshit. No hugs during tricks, it was a rule after cycle two or something. “And shit like fighting the power bear? Fuckin’ classic. You keep us alive and—and you keep us whole. Just because I’m a dope-ass bodyguard from the outer ‘verse doesn’t mean that’s gonna change.”

He set the pan down and made eye contact. This bit had to stick; he wasn’t doing this shit again. It was already near-scandalous just to think it.

“You’re my brother, Magnus. I may not be— _real_ , really, but. You’ll always be my brother. There is nothing that could replace you.” Taako put a hand on Magnus’s shoulder and shook it a little to make his point. This time he broke eye contact first.

He grabbed the cutting board and swept the veggies into the pan to give Magnus a second to compose himself. He heard a sniffle.

There. He’d said it. It had always been an ‘us vs. them’ world and now Magnus was part of ‘us.’ And he, Taako, had said it out loud.

Lup had never had a choice in being his sister. She was born to him just as much as he was assigned to her. But now he had this dumb human who could say _no_ and _hurt him_ and he’d just given him a gaping opening. What the hell was he thinking?

“You’re my brother too, Taako. It’s—hearing about what you are isn’t gonna change that, okay? You may have been born somewhere else but you’re here with us now. You’re one of us. That’s _real_. I don’t know what visiting home is like for you, but don’t you say you’re not real. You’re _Taako_. You could be a—a changeling from hell, or something, or you could be from fantasy Florida and you’d still be family and I would still love you. Okay? The others’ll come around. We all love you, Taako. Okay?” Magnus was _breaking the damn rules_ and getting close to him while he cooked, but Taako couldn’t scrounge up any annoyance. His vision was getting blurry.

He wasn’t supposed to be capable of love. He wasn’t supposed to have a family. Even if he did, somehow, he wasn’t a _person_. They weren’t supposed to love him back.

He took the pan off the heat. He needed a minute.

_You’re one of us._

_We all love you, Taako._

This was—fuck, this shit wasn’t supposed to happen to him. He wasn’t supposed to get fuckin’ _life affirmations_. The big goopy ‘we still love you’ shit wasn’t supposed to—it was never supposed to be for him. Lup was weird, an abnormality, but she wasn’t supposed to be _right_. People didn’t _agree with her_.

His shoulders hitched and he felt his ears flatten in embarrassment. Fuck.

_One of us. Family. Real._

He turned in to Magnus’s shoulder and hid his face. _Just for a moment_ , he promised himself. He was already having the sappy bullshit scene; he could follow his part of the script. He’d seen fantasy soap operas. He knew what to do.

He ignored how real it felt when he sobbed into Magnus’s shoulder. How relieving it was to lean into him, his brother, he had a sister and a brother and they loved him; and to wrap his arms around him. He ignored the shake in his shoulders, squashed the urge to make this whole conversation not a thing. Magnus deserved more than that. Taako wasn’t sure but he thought _Taako_ deserved more than that.

He squeezed Magnus as tight as he could, shaking with the effort. Magnus squeezed him right back. Taako had always thought feeling safe in someone’s embrace was bullshit because how could either of you keep an eye out if you were busy hugging it out, but he found he’d never felt safer.

Magnus was really good at hugs. Hugging proficiency.

“What the hell are you doing to my b—oh. Hi.” Taako immediately squirmed out of Magnus’s arms at his sister’s voice as she skidded into the room. She looked sheepish. “Uh, sorry. Again. I just felt—”

“ _Nothing,_ you felt _nothing_ ,” Taako hissed. He could already feel his face heating up. Magnus was laughing behind him.

Lup grinned, catching on, because she was the _worst_.

“Oh, did I, brother dearest? Because I thought I felt a _feeling_ ,” she teased. Taako grabbed the dishcloth from the counter.

“I am made of fucking stone, you take that back,” he brandished the cloth threateningly, but she didn’t seem too frightened. The red eyes and fucking cuddling he’d just been doing probably weren’t helping his case.

“Oh, made of stone or fantasy silly putty? ‘cause I think I just saw—” That was it. Taako attacked his sister with the dishcloth and tackled her to the ground. She managed to wrestle it away from him before he could get at her hair, though.

“No! Nope, you didn’t see anything, you did not see _shit_ —” He was cut off when he was pulled into the air by the scruff of his neck. Lup was receiving the same treatment, dangling in the air two feet from him and kicking Magnus in the shin on the way up.

“N’aww, Lup, if you wanted in on the hug you should have just said so!” Magnus teased, and they were both restrained in a fucking meatball hug. Taako was never making fun of Magnus’s workout routine again, this was worse than a steel trap. Lup shrieked and giggled and neither of them resisted too hard.

She glanced over at him with a devious glint in her eye. He grinned back. They both went for the tickle spots.

Having one sibling was great. Phenomenal. A better life than Taako had ever dared to imagine.

Having two was even better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sobs* I love my brother so much, I love sibling narratives
> 
> Magnus rolled a nat 20 to pick the twins up, by the way. It was beautiful. Taako kept flubbing his attack rolls.


	2. Lucretia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako opens up. Lucretia learns a lot of deeply upsetting things. They both pretend for each other that it isn't happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here she is! The girl!!!

Lucretia was reading in her room when he finally tracked her down. It had taken forever to get Lup to stop hovering for an hour so he could slip away, but she was on a research frenzy and didn’t need him for the moment, so he was free. He let himself in and sprawled on Lucretia’s bed, trying his hardest not to be aware of where she was, how long it would take her to get her wand out and what she could do with it.

“Taako? Did you need something? Is there a meeting?” she asked, startled. Right. He can’t just walk into people’s rooms.

“Nah, just wanted to hang out with my favorite bookworm,” he drawled, closing his eyes and stretching out luxuriously because he could do that here. What a way to live.

“Lup’s your favorite bookworm,” she said, but she was laughing so Taako called it a win.

“Nah, Lup and I can’t read,” he lied blatantly. Lucretia gave an inelegant snort and he grinned despite himself. He’d missed this.

“Of course. Mind if I keep writing?” she asked. He opened an eye lazily but couldn’t see which notebook she had out from this angle. Ah well, she’d probably need a new one for this anyway.

“I was hoping you would,” he told her. She turned to face him, interest piqued.

“Oh?” she asked. “Did you need something recorded?”

She put her pen down and her fingers flexed a little bit. Her feet shuffled. He could practically feel the questions wriggling through her brain. He sat up a little, slouched against the wall.

“I don’t. I was thinking you’d want to, though. Here.” He reached into his room and grabbed a blank notebook to toss to her. Her eyes skipped over his arm as she tried to follow the movement and she grabbed her pen.

“Thank you? I haven’t finished this one yet,” she said, tilting her current notebook towards him. “How did you—”

“That’s what it’s for. Me. Thought you’d wanna.” He didn’t look at the dawning realization in her eyes. He wasn’t the biggest fan of being studied when Lup wasn’t there, but. Lucretia. She was approximately as threatening as a melted butter dish. He shifted, bringing his knees to his chest, grabbing a pillow. She had about a million of them. He felt the uncomfortable tingle that came out of making non-Lup-certified decisions. She hadn’t told him he couldn’t, though.

“Really? You’re—are you sure?” she asked, clutching the notebook. Hah, she was almost more nervous than he was.

“Hell yeah I’m sure, would I be here if I didn’t want to be? I’ve seen you with the new species we come across. Don’t act like you haven’t been dying to catalogue yours truly,” he gestured grandly to himself and then grabbed his pillow again. She looked troubled.

“What? Taako, I wouldn’t—” she protested, but he shrugged.

“Don’t worry about it. Pursuit of science, right? I won’t let you ask anything I don’t want to answer,” he promised. He could see the curiosity wrestle with hesitance on her face. “Come on, bookmouse, I didn’t ditch Lup so you could mother-hen me, too. I’m a big boy, I can handle it.”

Finally, she relented.

“Okay, but we can stop at any time, alright? And if you don’t want me to write something down I can keep it off the record. That’s standard procedure,” she insisted. Inner-worlders. So anxious.

“Yeah, sure. Fire away.”

She closed her other notebook and put it to the side, cracking open the new one and making a surprised noise when she found the existing notes in it. He’d written down what he thought she’d want to know in preparation, a couple of things he was created already knowing and a few things he and Lup had picked up on the way. It was the longest existing written primer on his species and it was three pages long. It was a little humiliating.

“Oh,” she said. “Where did you get my formatting from—no, that’s not relevant. Thank you, Taako. That was very thoughtful of you.”

He averted his eyes. His face was hot. “I stole your other notebooks. I spilled water on three of them. You better not have needed that information on the vegepygmies.”

She struggled to keep a straight face for a moment before laughing. Fuck her, she won’t even get mad at him. “Of course you did. Mind if I start from the start, though? Going over everything with another person here might help.”

“Sure, do what you want. I can talk about myself for days, you know this,” he told her. She rolled her eyes. Good. He’d hate to do this while she was walking on eggshells.

“What is the name of your…species? What do you call what you are?” She asked, smoothing down the first blank page of the book and dividing sections to start out with. He reached a bare foot out to poke her arm.

“Haven’t really got a name. Servants, I guess? Hey you? My current,” hmm. How to put it. Lup hated the word ‘master’ and all synonyms, and he could guess Lucretia would feel the same.

Lucretia noticed his hesitation. “You can talk to me like you would to anyone of your class, don’t worry about my feelings. This will be easier if you’re honest.”

He looked at her, but he’d never been good at inner-world expressions. She seemed fine. “Okay. My current master sometimes calls us units. He’s not much into manufacturing, I think he might think we’re machines? That’s not universal, though. Mostly we get ‘hey, you.’”

“We’ll workshop it. How many of you are there?” she asked, scribbling a note down and switching to pencil. Yeah, there might be a lot of erasing going on. Taako had never really looked into what he was until he was surrounded by people who had no idea.

Hmm. How many of them were still around? Hard to say. He thought of the two who he’d worked with most closely. Between the three of them they had, what, a fifty/fifty survival rate? Did he count as operational? He couldn’t really vouch for anything broader than that…a blurry memory flits through, seeing others like himself made and shipped out.

“Hard to say. A lot, probably?” He doesn’t remember a number, though he must have had a better guess at some point. More than one was all he could really guarantee, though. Jack had still been around when Elliot had last checked, and he had seen others around when they’d been fixing him.

“Ballpark it for me,” Lucretia said. “Wait, I mean, that’s not an order, you don’t have to—”

Taako laughed. “Don’t worry about it, you can’t make me do shit. Let’s see.”

He thought for a moment, scrabbling at the vague memories. It had been a while. “I worked production for a bit, I think, there were a lot…when I was made there were a million of us, or thereabouts. But they kept making us for a while, we’re like…I dunno, shoes. We’re a household staple. Probably in the trillions now.” He had no idea, but that sounded accurate. He didn’t even know how many people there were in the outer universe, it wasn’t like he’d been reading the newspaper. He hadn’t needed to know.

Lucretia had stopped writing. “The trillions.”

He looked back at her. She was giving him a look like she thought he was messing with her.

“Hey, it makes sense! If you could buy a little person to do your laundry and you never had to worry about it again, you’d want, like, seven, right? Some people had hundreds of us. And we last a while, so we’re pretty handy!” Lup would kick his ass if she heard him promoting his servitude like this, but he didn’t want to go through the hassle of fighting his programming over something so little when he had a whole biography of his people to get through.

Lucretia let out a low whistle. “Damn. Okay, trillions. How long do you live, on average?”

Taako shrugged. “I mean, time is wonky there. We’re pretty much designed to keep going forever unless something goes wrong.”

Lucretia looked up. “Goes wrong?”

He shrugged, made a vague gesture with his hand.

“You know, breaks. One of us gets assigned somewhere too long and gets quirky. Stops adjusting. When we get reassigned we keep acting like we did in our old job, move things around to match how they were there, stop working well at our new job. If it’s real bad we’ll just keep going back to where we were assigned even though we don’t work there anymore. Some people keep us and deal with the lag, some people send us in to get fixed, mostly we get.” He remembered Elliot. He remembered the end of his visit home. He remembered a hundred others. He’s not supposed to feel guilt, so he doesn’t. He doesn’t. “Decommissioned.”

“For being homesick?” Lucretia demanded.

He sat up, startled. “What? No, we don’t get homesick. We don’t have homes.”

Lucretia frowned. “That sounds an awful lot like homesickness to me. Let me guess, you were similar after what happened to the Homeworld for a while?”

“No,” Taako said. That was wrong on so many levels. This world wasn’t his home.

Lucretia stared him down.

“Maybe a little,” he allowed. “You guys did act pretty similar for a bit, but you got better. I didn’t have my assignment switched. I brought my home with me.”

Lup would be with him as long as he could help it. They might be drifting place to place, but Taako had his home right by his side.

He shook his head. “Anyway, that’s not relevant. As long as we’re not used carelessly or deliberately damaged we can be used for a long time. I can’t really quantify it for this dimension. I existed before this universe, but I don’t think I’m really older than it, you know?”

Lucretia pinned him with a sharp look, but whatever she was thinking, she let it go. “Yeah, I think I get it.”

Taako had a thought. “Actually,” he started. He stopped.

“What?” Lucretia asked.

“Nah, never mind. Next question.” It was stupid anyway.

“No, tell me what you wanted to say,” Lucretia said. “I want to hear it.”

Gods, what a cliché. He scowled. “It’s not important. What’s your next question.”

She gave him a measuring look and he crossed his arms defiantly, but she just hummed thoughtfully and said, “Barry said you teleported him. Is that a thing you can do now? Could you always do it?”

This one he could answer. “Yeah, more or less. I’m not really supposed to do it to other people, but I wasn’t quite in my right mind at the time. Basically, I pulled him out of our universe and put him back in somewhere else. Probably not something I can do anymore, though.”

“Really? Why not?” Lucretia asked, jotting down a note next to the main text. Taako waved a hand dismissively.

“Well, I’m not so popular back in the outer ‘verse right now. If I pulled out entirely they’d probably not let me come back in.” And then they’d retire him and he’d die. Not an optimal situation on all counts.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you told Lup that?” Lucretia asked. Taako did his best to grin disarmingly, but given the look on her face he landed closer to ‘suspicious.’

“Nah, she’d freak out about it. She barely leaves me alone since I’ve come back, I’m not giving her something else to freak out about.” He hated worrying his sister. She already went through enough for him.

“Taako,” Lucretia sighed.

“Hey, fuck off, Lucy. What else do you need to know?” He shot back without heat. It was hard to be upset with Lucretia, and also in general.

Lucretia let it pass, but she gave him a serious look. “You mentioned being ‘deliberately damaged.’”

Taako met her eyes and looked away deliberately so she could see him ignoring her. “I’m not answering that.”

She nodded. “Fair enough. Do you live in communities with one another or separately?”

Taako relaxed as she moved back to safe ground. “Not really, we live where our bosses tell us to. It’s a good time.” He didn’t know why he said that.

Lucretia raised her eyebrows at him. “Is it?” she asked.

Taako squirmed. “Well, I mean, I can’t answer that right now. In my last job before this I only saw two others regularly, and a whole bunch that rotated pretty quickly. I think those guys were doing what I’m doing now.”

Lucretia made a note. “There are others who do what you do?”

He shrugged. He remembered giving them their assignments; he’d had seniority and he’d used it. If he hadn’t been in the right place at the right time he’d still be there. “I wasn’t meant to be unique. We have a pretty incredible decommission rate after being assigned to this job in particular, though.”

“So we might meet others like you?” Lucretia asked. It was hard to get a read on how she was feeling but she sure was feeling it.

“No. There are a lot of universes to take care of, sending two of us in for one would be a waste of resources,” he said. He thought about his crew meeting another construct. Like him but better, following the rules, impartial. Heartless. He shivered.

Then again, she’d asked for the truth.

“There’s a chance, now that I’ve sorta…gone off the beaten path, as it were. That they may send someone else in to finish my job and…take care of it. Hey, what’s it feel like not to have a job, Lucretia?” He changed the topic quickly so she didn’t have time to follow up. If he saw anyone from the outer universe come in he’d kill them off quick and no one would have to know.

Lucretia looked at him quizzically. “Not to have a job at all? Or not one you care about?”

Real people were complicated. “Is there a difference?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. Fuck, he’d messed up. Shit. Fuck.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I had to write a biography about the most boring man in existence once. He was rude, and snobby, and gross…it was terrible. I nearly dropped it a hundred times. I ended up dedicating it to his gardener for having to put up with him.”

Taako cackled and Lucretia gave him a little grin. “Fuck, that’s great! Did he read it?” He slapped his knee in excitement and leaned forward until he almost fell off the bed. Lucretia reached out and stabilized him with a mischievous smirk.

“The gardener did,” she said. “He asked for an autograph.”

“Oh fuck yeah,” Taako chortled. He could just see mousy little Lucretia and the fucking gardener roasting some guy like he didn’t even know. He knew there was a reason he liked her.

Once their giggles died down, Taako sighed. “Man, what a way to live. I can’t imagine being able to do that,” he said, somewhat wistfully. It hurt to say, but Lup had put a barrier back around his soul, so he didn’t have to cough up his immortal essence. It’s the little things in life.

“What, you can’t give autographs?” Lucretia asked, and he gave her a look for playing dumb. She was always trying to make people think she wasn’t as smart as she was. He didn’t think she even realized it.

“Naw, we’re not allowed to not like our owners. Don’t want a revolution. Like how you feel about Davenport, right?” he explained. Lucretia looked puzzled.

“I like Davenport,” she told him. He sat up.

“Wait, really?” Was that allowed?

“Yes? Do you _not_ like Davenport?” She was beginning to look troubled and he hastened to correct her.

“No, yeah, I think he’s badass! But he’s not my _boss_ , you know? I mean I guess he is sort of but I mean—you really have feelings about people who are like—in charge of you?” He could barely imagine it. Wasn’t that disrespectful? He wanted to ask Lup.

Lucretia was giving him a look and it was hard to decipher.

“I can’t _not_ have feelings about people,” she said cautiously. “Doesn’t Lup usually have feelings about the people in charge of you two?”

Taako tried to imagine someone being in charge of Lup. Was that even possible? No way, she’d never allow it. Even if she suffered a brief period of insanity, he’d still be there to keep it from happening. Completely impossible.

“Well yeah, Lup always has feelings about people,” and it was weird at first, having a companion who had feelings so loudly and so often, especially when they were children, “but she hasn’t got a master. She is a master. I mean, a really weird one but she’d never have a _boss_. Not like how I was thinking Davenport is your boss.”

Lucretia frowned severely and Taako wondered what was setting her off. Oh, shit, right.

“Not that I’m saying you need to be, uh, controlled? Or whatever? Just, whatever I said, I take it back, no offense, I respect you deeply, as, like, a person,” he hastened to say, stumbling through the niceties. He wasn’t very practiced at them. Lup always understood without them and no other inner-worlders mattered enough to bother with.

Lucretia manually smoothed out the wrinkles in her forehead, but he got the impression of something restless about her still. She pretended it wasn’t there pretty well, though. He’d teach her yet.

“Thank you, Taako. Davenport is, I think, a different kind of boss. Definitely in charge of us, but we’re allowed to have feelings about it,” she clarified. Lucretia was a godsend, Taako decided. He wasn’t sure quite why (there was nothing to be upset about, he was just explaining how things were supposed to be, it didn’t make any sense), but he was pretty certain Lup would have ended up yelling a lot and not actually resolving his misunderstanding. His sister could be perplexing like that sometimes.

He decided to push one step further, to be sure he understood. Lucretia would tell him if he was asking something weird, right?

“Isn’t that disrespectful? Like, if you like Davenport because he’s, I dunno, good at stuff or he makes good decisions or whatever…that means you’re looking at his decisions and you’re _deciding_ whether they’re right or wrong. Like who the hell gave you the right, you know what I mean? He’s your boss, you can’t just _judge_ him,” he asked. What kind of inefficient system would that be? Where your employees always had to stop and decide whether they liked what you’re doing or not before they did it? Things would never get done. He and Lup made decisions at a snail’s pace as it was and there were only two of them.

“Wait, so let me throw this at you,” Lucretia tried. “If your boss told you to jump into a volcano, how would you feel about that?”

Taako shrugged. “I wouldn’t really feel anything. Gotta do what you gotta do. Lup wouldn’t do that because she’s fuckin’ awesome, but if she did that would just be, like…how do you feel about dirt being brown? That’s just how it is.”

“But Lup wouldn’t do that and that makes her awesome, right? That’s an opinion,” Lucretia challenged. Hah, foolish Lucretia.

“Nope, that one’s objective fact. Lup is the best,” Taako told her. He’d established that long ago. Wasn’t against the rules to know facts about your boss.

Well, sometimes it was. This one in particular was okay, though. Lucretia chuckled.

“Fair. She kind of is.” She looked over her notes. “Hey, what’s with the trident?”

He brought his weapon out for inspection. “Oh, this? It’s a part of me, they took it out and made it into this when I was assigned here. Can’t be disarmed if you are the weapon, right? Now that I can use it, I like magic better, though.”

He gave it a couple easy flips to show off. Lucretia’s eyes followed the movement.

“Do you think you could use it as a spellcasting focus?” she asked. Huh. He’d never thought of that before.

“Maybe? I’ve never tried,” he said. He prodded at it with his magic and it crackled. Hard to say if it was a good crackle or a bad crackle. “We should probably wait to play around with that.”

Lucretia held out a tentative hand. She looked pretty damn impressed. “Can I touch it?”

Taako grinned. Hell yeah. “Go for it. Swing it around some, guarantee you’ll feel like a badass,” he said.

 She stood up and took it from him. It felt a little weird having someone else hold it, but there wasn’t shit she could do to break it, so whatever.  She gave it a few swishes.

“This isn’t heavy,” she said. “Is it hollow?”

He reached out and she started to hand it back before he corrected her grip. As long as he wanted her to have it, she didn’t have to worry about it slipping from her hands, and she had a death grip on the thing.

“Well, no. It’s not really made of metal so much as it’s made of, like…existence, right? I mean I could make it heavy, but there’s no real point unless I need the leverage. It doesn’t have weight on its own,” he told her. “Jeez, lighten up a little, you don’t need to strangle it! You’re not gonna drop it, stop worrying.”

She made a visible effort to hold it more lightly. Phew.

“Is that what you’re made of, too?” she asked. “Magnus says you barely weight anything, I always thought it was just because you’re an elf.”

Taako raised an eyebrow. “We don’t actually have hollow bones, you know. That’s just some racist bullshit the elf furries made up, they’re porous but they don’t fuckin’ echo.”

Lucretia looked appropriately embarrassed, but he didn’t let her apologize.

“But yeah, I am made of the same stuff, sort of. Hey, watch this,” he said, and made himself more real.

He didn’t know what it looked like to someone else except that Lup said it was spooky and fucking awesome, but he was from the world that created this one and he could place himself wherever he wanted in it, to whatever degree he wanted. He could make himself more _there_ than the ship around him, than Lucretia, than anything else this world would ever know. He could put himself so firmly in his chosen place and time that no mortal energy could affect him.

It wasn’t really useful except as a party trick, but apparently it looked pretty cool. He faded back to Lucretia’s level.

“Holy shitballs,” she said. Taako grinned. Finally, an appreciative audience.

“Right? My existence in this world is, like, _made_ of this world. If you ever need something real for a spell, cha boy’s _made_ of real,” he bragged.

Lucretia’s face changed in an instant. She grabbed his arm. “Don’t say that!”

Oh, fuck. He’d forgotten. “Right. Shit. Spell components, sore subject. Sorry.”

“Yeah.” Lucretia handed his weapon back to him and sat back down with her notebook, rubbing her eyes briefly before straightening. “Could you always use magic?”

Taako looked at her, but she didn’t seem too distraught. She mostly seemed done talking about it.

“No, I couldn’t before Lup. Magic needs a soul.” He thought of something he’d been wondering about. “Hey, did you have magic as, like a baby? Babies have souls.”

Lucretia graced him with a soft laugh. “Goodness, no, I’m no sorcerer. I think I learned my first cantrip when I was nine.”

Interesting. “Which one was it?”

She wiggled her fingers and they were surrounded by glowing orbs. “Dancing lights. I had a neighbor who was a drow and I thought they looked pretty.”

Taako laughed. “Fair, fair. Lup’s was firebolt.”

“Of course it was,” Lucretia said fondly. “What was yours?”

“Oh, prestidigitation, deff. I was mad excited once we figured out I could do magic, had to get that pressie on.” He creates some sparks to dance around her lights and the two of them make a cute little production out of it.

“What kind?” she asked.

“Bit of everything. I tried to cast flavor first but it kept fizzling, so Lup tried to show me how to do it, and, you know. Go-Gurt.” He gestured at himself. Lucretia lets her lights drop to stare at him.

“Wait, you were serious about that?” she demanded, grinning incredulously.

“Hell yeah. You didn’t manage to permanently summon lights or something your first time, did you?” He knew before she says anything that the answer would be no. He didn’t know a lot about her childhood, but he hadn’t gathered that there had been a lot of room for mistakes.

Luckily, she smiled smugly. “No, I made sure I understood my cantrips before casting them,” she said.

He brought a hand to his chest, wheezing. “Savage. You’re breaking my heart, ‘Cretia!”

She just hummed and punched his shoulder. “I’m sure I am.”

Lucretia had been the second choice for his assignment, after Lup. He wondered about the world where he’d grown up as her twin, where he’d lived in a big empty house and learned magic that didn’t hurt anybody. Piano lessons like clockwork and the endless press of expectations.

He loved Lup, with an intensity he’d never thought he was capable of. But if he hadn’t been assigned to her, he thought Lucretia would be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucretia deeply admires her Drama Brother Taako and Taako wants to see Lucretia grow up big and strong, to protect her, to tell his friends and neighbors about her,,
> 
> Please let me know if you liked it! Merle is up next!


	3. Davenport

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako makes his very best attempt at having a serious meeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol did I say Merle was next? I lied it's Davenport. This chapter's real short, though, because they pretty much resolved their issues at the end of And I Will.

Lup had wanted to be there when he talked to Davenport, so they both knocked on his door midway through the afternoon. It would have been longer, but neither of them could wait any more. Best to just get it over with. There was some shuffling inside.

“Lup? Taako? Come on in. Did you need something?” Davenport was still dressed for exploring from when they’d landed on the planet earlier that day, and when Taako peeked in his room he saw the map they’d swindled out of the locals. Probably deciding on their next stop.

He let Lup head into the room first and kept an eye out before closing the door behind them. Training was too recent for him to allow his charge near easy access points. Stupid.

“We lied to you,” Lup said. Okay. Starting out with the big ones. Taako went to her side.

Davenport raised an eyebrow. “I’m aware,” he said.

Lup grabbed Taako’s hand and jutted her chin stubbornly, awaiting their sentencing. Taako squeezed back and leaned on her shoulder.

Davenport kept looking at them expectantly. “Was there something else?”

“Aren’t you—” Taako tugged on Lup’s jacket and she stopped.

“Yeah, there was. I don’t actually work for you,” he said. Then frowned. “I mean, I guess I sort of do. I work for Lup and she works for you, sort of. And I said I’d help you. But. We need to figure that out.”

Davenport nodded slowly. “Like, the logistics of it? I’m fine with continuing as we have been. I haven’t especially noticed anything wrong.”

Taako stared. He looked at Lup and she tilted her hear encouragingly.

“I never to what you tell me to,” he says, in case Davenport has somehow forgotten. “We blow shit up all the time. You remember that time you were about to negotiate for the light and Lup and I fell in the fountain of youth? And when Lup dies, I’m—gonezo, baby, that’s the end of Taako. I’m not comin’ back from that twice. And! I’m not supposed to be able to do magic! I’m actually better at using my weapon but I just don’t! What in that makes you think, oh, yeah, this is good, I am being respected well by my supposed subordinates? It’s no good!”

Davenport nodded again. “Well, if that’s your concern, don’t worry about it.”

Lup grinned triumphantly at Taako as if she hadn’t been just as terrified of this meeting as he was.

“Don’t worry about it,” he repeated.

“Don’t worry about it!” she confirmed.

Davenport smiled wryly. “I did actually meet you before selecting you for the mission, if you recall,” he says, which, sure, whatever. But he hadn’t _known_ then.

“You thought I was, like a person, though. Like a real person who was born out of another person with their own soul.” He tried to explain where the issue was coming from, but Davenport apparently just wasn’t getting it. He continued to look serene and confident.

“I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting you to be from outside our world,” he said, which, yeah, Taako fucking hoped so. He’d worked hard enough to hide it. “But I did know what I was getting into when I nabbed you two. Even if I hadn’t, I was warned extensively by your professors and a very long letter from a Gregory Grimauldis. Actually, that letter makes a lot more sense now, now that I think about it. Did he know what you are?”

Taako shook his head absently. “Saw I didn’t have a soul, wasn’t happy,” he said. “you’re seriously just cool with one of your crew members being a fuckin’ construct? Don’t you have to be—I don’t think I’m even a citizen.”

Lup tugged on his hair. “Citizen of where, dumbass? Homeworld’s gone, we’re all aliens now.”

Which, fair, Taako couldn’t argue with that, but still.

“No issue. You’re seriously just peachy keen with this?” he insisted. Davenport was unswayed.

“Yeah, nothing wrong by me. As far as I can tell, you’re as much responsible to me as any other crew member, and even more so to our mission,” he said. Taako made a noise of frustration.

“I’m not, though! You can tell me to do literally anything and no matter how much it needs to happen I don’t have to do it unless Lup does! I could just—stop working tomorrow and you wouldn’t be able to do shit about it! That’s just cool with you? What if I were assigned to fucking kill you, huh? You’d just fucking die!” Lup yanked him back by a shoulder and he had to consciously stop and take a deep breath. Getting a little upset there, maybe. One of Davenport’s pens was floating and he still wasn’t preparing for an attack. Come to think of it, Taako was floating, too.

“I’m not concerned,” Davenport said.

Taako sat down on his bed because he needed a minute.

“I pointed a weapon at you,” he said. “I don’t—I killed Merle’s aloe vera plant while he was dead because I watered it too much and I forgot to take it out of the sun.”

“That’s what happened to that? Well, in that case, you’re out, then. If you killed the aloe vera you don’t have a place on my crew,” Davenport said. Taako looked up to try to tell whether he was joking or not. He thought probably he was.

Lup smirked. “Told you. Gotta keep quiet about the aloe incident.”

She seemed relaxed, so it was probably fine. Taako groaned.

“No, seriously. You’re good. Both of you. I can see why you did what you did, and I’d prefer that you trust me in the future, but you’ve both—all of you—have gone above and beyond the call of the mission. I’m glad to have you on my crew,” Davenport smiled at them. Taako seized the rare Cap’nport compliment for what it was and smiled back. Magnus was gonna be _so jealous_.

“Hell yeah, we’re bomb as fuck,” Lup said. “You need anything else, Taako? ‘cause we’ve got shit to finish up, got another casting tonight if you’re up for it.”

Taako shrugged. “You need anything, Cap?”

Davenport shook his head. “Be back in time for supper, don’t blow the ship up.”

“Would we ever?” Lup grinned. Taako got up and walked to the door, but let her go first.

The second she was through, he turned back and mouthed a quick _thanks_ to Davenport. He’d know what for.


	4. Barry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako and Barry have a lot in common, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> r u ready for a _fucking trip_

Taako shifted impatiently under the covers for about the fifth time in a minute, pulling them to lay evenly and then moving again. He huffed through his nose. He did his best not to fade into a waiting mode.

Barry’s brows furrowed as he stirred for the first time the five damn hours. Fucking humans and their sleep. Failure of evolution, really. Someone should have put more thought into that design.

Something twinged in his mind at the implied criticism, but he ignored it.

Barry’s breathing started up and Taako knew he had ‘im.

“Barold!” he sang. “Wakey wakey!”

Barry startled and scrambled backwards, hitting the wall pretty quick.

“Holy fuck! Holy what the shit!” he said. Enlightening.

Taako laughed, “Oh, that one never gets old! Your _face_!”

“Taako!” Ah, the element of surprise was serving him well. Barry hadn’t used his name for a while. “What are you—what are you doing here? Why are you _in my bed_?!?”

Taako shrugged. “Oh, you know, a while. You were talking about my sister in your sleep.”

Barry’s face darkened immediately and he fiddled with his blankets, glancing side to side and not meeting Taako’s eye in a fun way this time.

“I—no I—um—I can explain—” he stuttered, curling in on himself. Oh, this was just too easy.

“Oh, Lup,” Taako lowered his voice to a gravelly approximation of Barry. “you’re so beautiful, I want to touch your hair and bother your ears and look soulfully in your eyes and cry…”

Barry collected himself enough to scowl. “That’s not—look, did you _need_ something?”

“Naw, you don’t actually talk in your sleep. Actually, you’re boring as fuck. Don’t even move. I was dying here,” Taako complained. “Ah, poor choice of words.”

Barry looked at the end table with his glasses. Looked back at Taako. Gauged the likelihood of being allowed to grab them, and began scooting to the foot of the bed, endearingly keeping himself wrapped in blankets. Taako shivered; his room was cold as shit.

“Right,” Barry said. “I’m, um, gonna get to work. In, uh. The lab. Yeah, I’m just gonna.”

Taako had a moment of concern that he’d been too much of an asshole, but this looked like normal Barry discomfort. The new normal, anyway, since the cat was out of the bag and all.

He pinned Barry with a look. _Not taking your bullshit today, not Taako, no sir!_

“It’s four thirty in the morning,” he told Barry.

Barry gave him a vague smile. Actually, more of a grimace. A grinace.

“Science, uh, waits for no man! So if I could just…change clothes?” he hinted. He started to get up and no, that wouldn’t do. Taako put him back on the bed.

Barry flinched as he registered his new location, and yeah, Taako probably shouldn’t do that again.  He heard murmurs from his home world.

Whatever. He spoke over them. So there.

“Sit the hell down, Barold, Lup ain’t here to distract me with. We’re gonna have a chat, you and I.”

Barry stared at him warily, glanced at the bedside table with his glasses and wand.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asked, with surprising evenness for a potential murder victim.

What?

“What the fuck, where did you even get that from,” Taako said, without evenness.

“Well?” Barry asked. “Are you or aren’t you?”

“I’m…not?” Taako asked. This wasn’t really where he’d thought the conversation would go. “Why would I kill you now if I haven’t before?”

“I know what you are,” Barry told him. Taako had an inkling of what Barry was, too.

A dumbass.

“Apparently, you don’t! How the hell would killing Lup’s crush help her?” he asked, because Barold _apparently_ needed these things spelled out for him.

“Lup has a—wait, no. I know what you _are_ ,” Barry stressed.

“Gay? Handsome?” Taako guessed. “Charming, delightful, a joy to be around…”

“Gods _damn_ it, Taa— _fuck_! The thrall thing! We’re talking about the fact that you’re a sentient fucking thrall! You were there when I read my thesis, you know how I— _fuck_ , Taako!” he exclaimed. His unnecessary breath was hard and short and he was getting red in the face again.

“Naw, that was Lup at the thesis,” Taako said.

Barry put his head in his hands.

“I saw both of you,” he said. “I spent three days figuring out how you were even allowed in.”

Taako shrugged. “We were interested. You used to do the same kind of research as we do, sort of. Close enough to help. If you’d taken the opposite stance, we’d have picked your brain afterwards.”

“But I didn’t,” Barry said.

“But you didn’t,” Taako agreed. And wasn’t that the bitch of the situation.

They sat in silence for a hot minute, Barry contemplating and Taako basking. He wasn’t trying to run away, this was progress! Lup would be thrilled when she found out.

Barry looked at him suddenly. “The right thing to do would be to—”

He stopped himself.

“Kill me?” Taako finished for him, when it became clear he was too busy wrestling his inner demons to finish the sentence.

“Put you to rest,” Barry corrected. Taako shrugged.

“Potato potahto. It’s what you wish someone would have done for you, right?” Barry flinched and Taako spared a moment for regret. That had probably been a bit too close to home.

“How did you know about that?” he demanded. “You—you can’t possibly—”

Taako rolled his eyes. “Sildar Hallwinter, last survivor of the Hallwinter massacre, and the new kid at school who really hates black-robe necromancy? Tries to make it a healing art, they say, writing his thesis about a law for mercy-killing thralls? Wasn’t a hard guess, my guy.”

Barry looked startled. Maybe he thought he was better at the whole secret identity thing than he really was. To be fair, most people weren’t looking as close as Taako and Lup were. At least, until they’d figured out he had no goddamned idea how he’d escaped his enthrallment.

“We didn’t tell anyone,” Taako says. “I mean, Merle knows his shit, so he’s probably got a good idea, but we didn’t say anything. We’ll keep calling you Barry until you tell us to stop. Thesis really gave you away, though.”

No one was quite as passionate about the morals of raising the dead as the living dead, and all.

Shaking off whatever he was feeling about that, Barry forged ahead. See, this was why Taako liked the guy. Willing to pursue what he thought was right endlessly. He wondered what it would have been like being assigned to Barry.

“Keeping a sentient being as a slave is _wrong_ ,” Barry insisted.

“Maybe for you,” Taako countered. “What happened to your family was fucked right the hell up, no lie. Can’t blame you if that one stings for a while. But I’m not undead, Barry. No one dragged me out of my grave. I am what I’ve always been.”

Barry shook his head.

“That’s terrible,” he said.

“That’s what led me to Lup,” Taako said. He can’t imagine a pain terrible enough that it wouldn’t be worth meeting Lup at the end. The very first and only person to think that Taako was a person, too.

Well. He thought about Magnus, the other day. In the kitchen. The pestering for trident lessons, the origami ducks waiting in a place of honor tucked away in his room. One of ‘em he’d nicked with his weapon, one of ‘em he’d stolen on a walk by. Both preventable, if anyone had tried.

Maybe Lup was one of two.

“It led to Lup being your new mistress, you mean,” Barry said lowly. “You’re no freer than you ever were. As long as you have a master, you will never be free.”

Well, that was uncalled for. If he weren’t right, Taako thought he’d be hurt. As it was, all he could do was give the point to Barry.

“Maybe not,” he said, and Barry looked startled by his easy agreement. “But Lup’s different. The best.”

Barry made a frustrated sound. “It doesn’t matter who’s pulling the strings if you’re still a puppet!”

“Harsh.”

“It’s the truth!” Barry insisted. “There is no freedom once you’ve been enthralled. It’s the end.”

“Like how you have no free will,” Taako replied, dry as the desert. “Oh, right, you killed your master. And a good chunk of your family, if I’m not wrong.”

Barry flinched. _Fuck_ , Taako needed to ask Lup about empathy next. People were so _hard_ without it. And now he felt bad.

“Not, uh, not that that’s a bad thing! They’re all, uh, free now! At rest! Great!” he backtracked quickly. His ears flattened back in apology. “I’m sure they’re much happier! Just, not an option I want to pursue, thanks! Taako’s good in here!”

Barry blew out a hard breath through his nose. He rubbed his eyes. _Shit_. He hadn’t meant to make him _cry_.

“I’m gonna ignore all of what you just said,” he said. Taako nodded.

“Wise choice. Except, can we keep the don’t kill me part? I don’t think you could, but I’d rather stay here for a while,” he suggested. Actually, Barry definitely could kill him, if indirectly. As soon as he got to the outer ‘verse…

Barry frowned.

“I don’t know what to do, Taako,” he confessed. “I wish you weren’t—I don’t want you to have suffered like…”

Taako nodded. Barry slumped miserably.

“You know, Lup’s trying to fix me up with free will,” he tried quietly. He kind of wanted to try patting Barry’s back, but Barry wasn’t Lup. There was no guarantee he’d understand Taako’s still-awkward attempts at comfort. “I’m sure she’d show you what’s what, if you wanted to check it out yourself before you decide how you feel. Both of us. We can show you what we’ve got. We’ve both thought about asking you for help before, but, uh, figured you’d shoot first, ask questions later, and all. But. We’d be, uh. It would be okay if you wanted to take a look.”

Barry, of all people, would know what this meant. Taako was willing to bet he’d never let anyone look at the spell animating him.

“Are you sure, Taako?” he asked. “I—knowing how I feel, you’d let me do that?”

Taako shrugged and didn’t meet his eyes.

“I’ve been having people dig through me since I was made,” he said. “Take out the bits they don’t like, add in what they do. Even Lup wants me to change. It would be nice to have someone at the wheel who, you know, gets it. Just, uh, no mercy kill, please.”

Barry smiled wryly. “Never thought my undeath would be a bonding point,” he said. Taako laughed with him, a little incredulously.

“Guess I never thought this world would make things like me, either. If, uh.” This was probably too far. This was probably way too far. Barry was gonna think he was weird and hate him forever and change his mind about ‘putting him to rest.’ “If you need help with anything. Anchor in this world, especially, I’m good at that. Or just. You know. Someone who gets it. If, uh.”

Barry smiled. Put a cold hand on Taako’s shoulder, didn’t bother heating it up like he usually did. No facsimile of life.

“I know, Taako. Me too.”

* * *

 

**HALLWINTER FAMILY SLAIN**

A postal carrier was shocked this morning  
to arrive to a silent Hallwinter mansion.  
This warm family, all proud members of  
our community, has a history of charitable  
giving and open house gatherings, but  
perhaps they were too generous: On   
further investigation, a necromancer   
known as Dharus was found slain in their   
home surrounded by several members of   
the family, with signs of raising in the study.  
  
It is believed that he came under the guise  
of a beggar and gained entry to the house  
before slaughtering his hosts in their sleep  
and raising their corpses for his own   
purposes. Only one is unaccounted for.  
Sildar Hallwinter, youngest son of Marian  
and Darius Hallwinter, is still reported   
missing.  
  
At this point, it is believed that the entire  
family was enthralled before Dharus was  
defeated by an actor unknown at this point.  
Authorities are searching for this hero and  
for the remains of Sildar in nearby farms  
and ask that you check cellars or  
storehouses with outside access.  
  
Anyone with information on the missing   
people or the event is encouraged to come   
to the militia as soon as possible. The   
necromancer is confirmed dead and a lone   
operator, but please support one another   
and take care in these trying times. **More  
on page 12  >**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a _fucking trip_

**Author's Note:**

> As always, please let me know what you think! Favorite parts? Lines? Themes? Interactions? Hated the whole thing? Actually please don't tell me you hated the whole thing, I worked really hard on it.
> 
> Please hang out with me on tumblr at [hahanoiwont](hahanoiwont.tumblr.com)!


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